Higher performance, lower cost, increased miniaturization of integrated circuit components, and greater packaging density of integrated circuits are ongoing goals of the microelectronic industry. As these goals are achieved, microelectronic devices become smaller. Accordingly, the density of power consumption of the integrated circuit components in the microelectronic devices has increased, which, in turn, increases the average junction temperature of the microelectronic device. If the temperature of the microelectronic device becomes too high, the integrated circuits of the microelectronic device may be damaged or destroyed. This issue becomes even more critical when multiple microelectronic devices are incorporated in close proximity to one another on a microelectronic substrate in a multiple microelectronic device package, also known as a multi-chip package. Thus, thermal transfer solutions, such as integrated heat spreaders, must be utilized to remove heat from the microelectronic devices. However, significant issues with removing heat are due to thickness differences between the microelectronic devices, warpage in the microelectronic substrate, and planarity of the integrated heat spreader. All these variations manifest themselves as variations in the thickness of a thermal interface material that is disposed between the integrated heat spreader and each microelectronic device. As will be understood to those skilled in the art, thick thermal interface materials add thermal resistance to the heat transfer from the microelectronic devices to the integrated heat spreader and, thereby, reduce the thermal performance of the multi-chip package.
Currently, the variations are accommodated with a compromise between the thermal performances of the various microelectronic devices in the multi-chip package. This is achieved by identifying most thermally critical microelectronic device, then the integrated heat spreader is designed in such a way as to bottom-out (touch or otherwise minimize the distance between the most thermally critical microelectronic device and the integrated heat spreader) on the most thermally critical microelectronic device. A cavity or a pedestal may be fabricated inside the integrated heat spreader to ensure that it bottoms-out on the most thermally critical microelectronic device. This can result in thicker thermal interface material layers on all the other microelectronic devices in the multi-chip package, which may degrade their heat dissipation. Thus, thermal performance on one microelectronic device is achieved at the expense of the thermal performance on other microelectronic devices in the multi-chip package.